noun [from geography and Shakespeare, 2005] 1. A small forest of words in the great metropolis of Brooklyn 2. A collection of ruminations, photographs, and lists on topics including (but not limited to) books, writing, movies, television, theatre, current events, publishing, food, and nonsense 3. The blog of Cheryl Klein, reader, writer, children's books editor, and busy lady about town

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

I love reading the entries in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, where entrants try to write the worst possible first line of an imaginary novel, and the 2009 winners were announced today. But I noticed that this year, no prize was given in the Children's Literature category, which seems a great loss, given past winners like these:

Jack planted the magic beans and in one night a giant beanstalk grew all the way from the earth up to the clouds--which sounds like a lie, but it can be done with genetic engineering, and although a few people are against eating gene-engineered foods like those beans it's a high-paying career to think about for when you grow up. (Frances Trimble, 2004)

Danny, the little Grizzly cub, frolicked in the tall grass on this sunny Spring morning, his mother keeping a watchful eye as she chewed on a piece of a hiker they had encountered the day before. (Dave McKenzie, 2007)

Hence I challenge all my blog readers -- writers, agents, editors, librarians, and critics alike -- to submit the worst possible opening sentence for an imaginary children's or YA novel in the comments here. We'll call this the Thomas Bowdler Fiction Contest, after that noble guardian of children's gentle sensibilities, and in keeping with Mr. Bowdler's delicate nerves, please try to make all entries rated PG-13 at most. Some other guidelines (after the BLFC's):

Each entry must consist of a single sentence. However, that sentence can be as long as you have space in the comment box (though beware of diminishing returns).

You can submit up to three times.

Please label each entry (C) for children's, (YA) for young adult, or (F) for Fantasy so it can be judged according to the proper standards.

All entries must be original to their creators and will remain the copyright of their creators.

Entries will be accepted until midnight Friday, July 17.

The Celebrity Guest Judges have yet to be determined/invited, since I just conceived of this contest in the last hour; but their decisions will be final.

In case this needs saying: The goal is hilarity through badness, not just plain badness. Identifying and puncturing cliches of both subject and language is strongly encouraged.

The winners in each category will each receive a copy of my book-to-be, pending its existence, and two runners-up in each category will each receive everyone's profound admiration (as will the winners, I'm sure). And, for their own enjoyment, all entrants are encouraged to spend some time looking through past Bulwer-Lytton winners (2004, 2007) and to submit to the real contest in future. Huzzah!

....Dense fog tilted and swirled around the small skiff as the darkness crept eagerly, chilling the two huddled figures groping for more of the threadbare blanket underneath the drooping makeshift thatch and the night air filled with a heaviness that obscure sounds penetrated almost like a snake swishing in the water...so deadly close, combined with strange far off cries and moans then a bizarre keening began, thousands of voices together in a wail that grew louder and louder... carrying the skiff up fast, rocking it back and forth shaking the passengers like dice until it stopped and all was obscenely quiet exept for a low sobbing then Tommy stood, in the light of the full moon holding up his sign that read, 'Junior High Guide Service' and he smiled because once again they had made it through the worst and had caught a few fish too, now they could escape because the lights of home twinkled on the shore of Arden cove and he knew he could explain to mom why they were late but he didn't expect her to believe him.(ya/fantasy)

Katy, who is lovingly labelled by her admirers as a solemn and inquisitive three year old, is really just another uninteresting and silly blob of three year old designer skin like all other babies, and she’s always proving me right—like the time when she tried to break an egg at the “right end” because she had seen “mommy doing so” and ended up being painted in fresh yolk, when she really could have just asked her mommy to break it for her.

(Category: YA)

(This was so much fun! Thanks for sharing, Cheryl! Oh and the previous comment was deleted by me, I forgot to mention the category.)

I feel a bitter taste rising in the back of my throat, like when I used to eat too many hot dogs before I became a vegetarian, and a prickly shiver creeping down the ends of my arm-hairs, and a sharp pain just to the left of my right temple, as my dad sits down at the shiny kitchen table, with its yellow-and-red flowery placemats looking all pathetically cheerful like this was actually a happy home or something, and takes a gulp of his fifth beer, his eyebrows twitching and his purplish nose starting to crinkle slightly as he growls menacingly, "How was school today?"

Even through the lustrous fabric of his 100-percent cotton pique Ralph Lauren polo shirt, she could see that his pectoral muscles were firm and full, sculpted by an artist at least as good as Michelangelo, if it’s not offensive to compare God to a human, and she desired him fiercely, madly, and irrevocably, and the knowledge of her love split her heart into a million pieces, for he could never love a clumsy, average-looking human girl—and thus her life was over before she'd even blown out the candles on her sixteenth-birthday cupcake, which was probably just as well, for when she leaned in to extinguish them, she set her blouse on fire.

The princess screamed when the dragon carried her away, but just for a little, because she knew that her Knight in Shining Armor (tm) would save her soon. But he didn't make it in time. The dragon ate her instead. Because, you know, that's what dragons do.

(YA)There are thirteen reasons that I hate you--although my math isn’t great (which must be genetic, ‘cause who bounced the check for the math tutor, huh?) so it actually could be fourteen (if I could find my list, I’d tell you, I left it right here, quit moving my stuff!), HA, yes, FOURTEEN reasons why I hate you, and I’m going to leave you a tape recording explaining exactly what each of those are… as soon as I can find my list… and the tape recorder… and, oh never mind.

(C) It was a plain old average ordinary day when the cute little anthropomorphic rodent was walking down the nondescript sort of path/lane, although rats really don't walk, thinking out loud about nothing in particular and trying to whistle a tune that he could not remember, although rats don't really whistle, do they?

I try to adore her the way she so obviously adores me--her glances cast sideways, hiking her already short skirt to the panty line--but all I really want is to suck her delicious, red, minty, thick-like-a-malted, blood, to give me resurrection from this hideous earthly life and to bring her along for snacks.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a quiet young girl who had no clue what in the hell Zovirax Cream was until they started blasting herpe medicine commercials with happy blistered people holding their hands all throughout prime-time.

“That mark on his left buttock . . . he IS the one,” Mira pointed with a gnarled finger as she spoke her wildest hope, that this baby would be the child of prophecy, the one the ancients feared, and by ancients she meant her husband, standing next to her, and the rest of the old geezers that congregated at the corner of 5th and Main to sit outside the liquor store and talk about how great the olden days were, when a man was king of his castle and didn’t have to take his turn changing the grandkid’s diaper.

Bethany brushed her long, cascading hair one hundred and five times (once for every day that had passed so far this year), before picking up her tube of fire-red, cherry-scented lipstick and applying a fresh coat; she wanted to achieve the perfect pout so that Tim would find her lips irresistibly kissable when he saw her at the football game later that night.(YA)

Little Penny Piper fell down the long staircase, head first, until her bottom hit the bottom step with a loud thump that brought her father into the living room with his usual stern look and wagging finger.(c)

Poof – any chance Mary Jane had with her dream boy, Robert Thompson, captain of the varsity baseball team, had exploded the moment he sat next to her at the picnic table and tossed her his dashingly perfect smile, causing her stomach to twist and roll in uncontrollable spasms of nervous anxiety, bubbling with anxious anticipation, rendering her helpless against the ever-building pressure straining against her loins until it burst from her in a squeaky gust of baked beans and heartbreak on the wooden bench. (Romantic YA)

It was show-and-tell day, and Bobby couldn’t wait for the presentation he had planned all about owls, especially the part where he would do a personal demonstration of how to eat your mother owl’s regurgitated food. (C)

Misty regretted Kindergarten coming to an end, given how cliquey and cutthroat first grade was bound to be, especially considering the budget cuts that would leave many of her first-grade peers uneducated and jobless, with poor subtraction skills -- and she felt a pang of sadness as she waved goodbye to kind Mrs. Tillow, who would most likely get old and die over the summer. (C)

Lacey admired her science fair project – a diagram of a dog’s anatomy – one last time before she realized she needed to cross out the real word for the dog’s personal parts and replace it with the more polite “dingle-berry”; after all, she’d never become a famous biology researcher if her works were banned from the school library. (C)

"Women know more about sex than men," thought Alex who, at 34, suddenly remembered when he was 13, thighs pressed against Zoe's, in the back seat of a car driven by a Sunday School teacher after an outing, and with other 13-year-old boys crowded in the back seat, pushing him against her with gleeful cackles and making jokes about her so that he wasn't totally surprised, but hurt, when Zoe suddenly spun and slapped him, although he'd carefully kept both his hands in his lap; "she probably knew what I was thinking," and so thereafter he canceled all thinking when within 5 feet of any woman, and that worked well for him.

(YA)Madeleine’s heart beat loudly--way too loudly—as, in the shadows behind the school, with the wind pressing her thin satin dress against trembling legs and the pulse hammering hard in the soft, exposed curve of her neck, the looming, unkown figure reached for her, moonlight glinting off exposed teeth, and he whispered—

“You sure is purty!”, making her realize that it was smelly, bucktoothed Bill, the janitor, and not a vampire at all.

Bethany had thought her life was over when her parents forced her to move from Hawaii to some podunk town in Ohio, until she spied the incredibly hot guy sitting by himself next to the cafeteria window, his skin almost luminescent in the hot September sun, making her wonder, "He couldn't be, could he? So beautiful and sparkly? Could he be the one to bring magic, eternal love, and meaning to my otherwise empty existence?" but then, as she not-quite-nonchalantly slunk over in his direction and his musk pierced the cafeteria scents of burnt Tater Tots and bad chili, she decided he was shiny because he needed a bath and maybe she'd be better off joining the school newspaper or cross country team after all, instead of expecting some moronic teenage boy to change her life.

When he walked by, my knees turned to Jell-o that’s been left on the counter for too long because no one put it away after dinner—not overnight or anything because then it’s totally liquid, but maybe like a couple of hours so it’s all squishy and wobbly.

Magical Johnny speedily yanked his magic stone from his jean pocket and heartily whisked the dust off its layered, textured surface so that he could magically conjure a quick cheating spell before his ominous daily math quiz, which he had unfortunately failed every day since third grade.

I was nine years old, trying on a pile of winter coats at Goodwill when I found in the pocket of a pink and purple plaid monstrosity (chosen by my mother) a piece of paper that I hoped was an $10 bill, but turned out to be a flyer for "Candy Apple's Exotic Dancing and More," and it was then that my life's path turned toward pole dancing... and more.

(YA? I feel like this is going nowhere good... especially once this kid becomes a teen.)

It was only second period, but Felicity took out her bubblegum pink, Juicy purse mirror and checked her reflection for like the million and tenth time that morning, smoothing her perfectly flat ironed, gelled, but not quite so perfectly bleached blonde shoulder length hair and making sure that the fall of it didn't hide the ginormous, look-at-me, purple suck mark that her big, oaf of a jock boyfriend had left the night before with the big, pouty lips that I wanted to punch so bad. (ya)

Surrounded by the King's horses, and a swarm of His Majesty's Secret Service, a pale, cracked face lay next to a broken skateboard, and as Humpty stared at two twisted, skinny legs, he picked up pieces of his skull and muttered, "I wish I were back in the frying pan".

With twenty seven arrows thrust into his tall heroic body and scarlet blood shooting from him like a bright and noble fountain, Jargormandor charged across the battle field and slay the evil sorcerer, Crabgallion, before falling gracefully to the ground and declaring with his dying breaths that his young, valiant nephew, Brandormandor, would be the one to lead his people now safely to their homeland, and all wept the salty tears of great sadness mingled with the beautiful, silvery tears of joy; and so our story begins. (F)

(Thanks Chery! This is so fun AND therapeutic. I have a tendency to write too long sentences and this is like eating the whole cake at once, so you'll never want cake again.)

Mask the mommy raccoon, herded the nervous children at the side of the road, trying to avert their eyes from Big Ringtail, their dad, as he lay on the dashed yellow line - "He's just sleeping" she said, blinking back her tears.(c)

....I struggled, thrashing about and made no progress except to scrape my face in dirt and gravel as I got rolled and bounced even further down the ravine...then when I finally got free of the evil sleeping bag I felt the lump on the side of my head, and blinking I reconsidered just how wise the choice I'd made the night before was, really, to sleep on the narrow ledge above even though it had seemed like a good idea at the time as worn out from travelling as I had been but I didn't know that some wild burro's used that trail regularly early in the mornings and I certainly didn't know that they would completely scare the wits right out of me, sending me tumbling down the steep hill still in my sleeping bag...is being a teenager always this hard?(ya)

As the sun rose, Gabe, who possessed more persistence than intelligence, stopped preening his feathers to quack a promise to himself: today will be the day I figure out why I don't fit in with the other squirrels. (c)

Wanting to do his part in making berry pies for that night’s dessert, the young dragon plucked raspberries from the bushes with a quick snort, easily freeing the ripe ones from their thorny stems as he sniffed them up into his nostrils, then blew them back out into the basket with a loud, juicy “spat.” (F)

As he was running swiftly down the steep, greenish-brown, sloping hill, Gary the Gun stopped quickly in order to chat loudly with Gary the Grape with whom you naturally remember he also fiercely hated with an undying, smoldering passion, because Gary had viciously stolen away Gary’s girlfriend, Gary the Gorilla, whose long delicate strands of yellow blond hair would drop teasingly in her sapphire blue eyes, but before he slowly started to softly speak, he thought quietly to himself, Gary is such a jerk, I’ll just shoot him instead—Bang! (C)

The 16-year, self-induced melodrama I call life took a welcome but surprisingly unexpected plot twist when I noticed that I possessed an uncanny resemblance to my Uncle Erwin, who married into the family 17 years ago.

It was decided that the Prince of Lihuedernes needed to go on a quest to rid the elf kingdom of the dark magic of Raahuilsne the wizard, so a ragtag bunch of humorous companions was selected to accompany him on this dangerous, exotic and important journey to the wildly exciting ends of the earth.(F)

Danielle glided across the dance floor exactly the way a five hundred pound hippo wouldn't, not that I'm saying Danielle was fat, because that isn't nice, but I'm trying to use a metaphor here (or is it simile?)which is a literary device that shows what I great writer I am. (middle grade)

Mary had a little lamb (which, for story reasons, we cannot substitute for tofu because, as much as your parents may love it, it cannot follow you to school one day and is sadly lacking in fleece); its fleece was white as snow (which is in no way better than any other fleece or comparative weather condition)... (c)

So like, I was, you know, sick of my Mom’s new boss/billionaire fiancé so I so threw a total hissy in the penthouse elevator of our exclusive Manhattan apartment when Kim, my manicurist, got like this major tude and OMG, slept with my boyfriend—my life is ruined. (YA)

It was a dark and stormy night, when Jack’s soft as butter hands slowly and carefully worked themselves up, hoisting him up onto the stalks of the giant beanstalk, when alas, he hears from down below, a bellowing wail from his poor mother, “Hello Jack, my son, where is the cow you were supposed to have taken to the market today? Perchance, my dear son, Jack, you can go back to the market to retrieve her for I fear I am out of milk for my tea!!???,” and there so far, Jack’s hands went still like dead pools on the giant stalks and he slid down the giant beanstalk faster than you can say, ‘how much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck can chuck wood.’

My first kiss ever with the marvelous Marsha Monroe, ended in unmitigated disaster when the possibly off shrimp and bean burrito I had for dinner finally met my intestinal tract, leaving me with non-stop flatulence, topped off with explosive diarrhea, all in the back seat of her father's car. (YA)

Bobby’s dog Leaky had a farting problem, like another famous dog, which was fun and exciting until Bobby got a full whiff of the noxious decomposing skunk smell, threw up in a pillow case, and then met Priscilla, with whom he shared many great and daring adventures.

One bright, sunny day, that looked like those media people who keep telling us what the weather will be like were wrong, because they’d predicted rain, but the sky was blue, blue, blue, without even a hint of those fluffy clouds where you see Aunty Rose’s pet skunk playing a trumpet or a family of somersaulting hedgehogs, even though some people still only see white clouds, Jo-Jo left home with her swan head umbrella firmly tucked under her arm. (C)

I yawned and pulled myself out of bed after a nightmare filled sleep and stumbled to the mirror to force my long, flowing black hair into some semblance of order and as I looked in the mirror, my bright blue eyes stared back from my bright red face which made me wish I had used sunscreen yesterday when I spent all day in the blistering sun trying to find the enchanted gumball of the sorceress Chewyzy and prevent her from blowing the bubble that would destroy my world.

Jack and Jill went up the huge hill of sand, dragging their empty pail behind them and praying an oasis lay on the other side for if they didn't find water soon, Jack would have to do away with Jill and devour her to keep himself alive but, unfortunately for Jack, Jill had a similar plan.

Waking up and reaching under his pillow to see what the Tooth Fairy had left him, Jillian discovered not only her tooth still there, but that the TF had taken instead all the ones from inside her mouth. (C)

Candy Kane tripped happily along the street until she came to the corner where her mother sold herself because she was sure mom would have earned a couple of dollars by now, and Candy needed to gas up the sports car (mom had worked overtime for that one, but a girl only turns sixteen once) before she could drive to the weekend frat house party.

Mildred straightened up slowly, grunting and massaging her back after untying her shoelaces and thinking to herself, how lucky Cecile centipede was to only have a hundred feet, where as she herself had a thousand calloused millipede feet.

By the by, the sleepy little pig, still yawning and dressed in his pink jammies and pink fluffy bunny slippers, opened the door, expecting to see the contractor who was to help him lay the tiles in his new kitchen and was instead greeted by the wolf who remarked, “I work for free,” after the fleeing little pig crying wee-wee-wee all the way to the den.

As the years went by, the sisterly threats that stemmed from the Thompson sisters evolved from "I'll tell mom!" to a more effective "I'll rip our fallopian tube out with a pencil and drain your eggs so you can't have babies!". (ya)

Once, a female tried to join the brethren, only to be turned down on account that "The multi-gendered collective of the traveling skull" didn't sound badass enough to scare away minor enemy posers who were put off by gory names thus leaving the brethren with enough time to ourun legitimately scary foes. (f)

Skibbledibble was a bright pink punkin, which is pink and fluffy with bright eyes and a smile the size of his whole face, from the land of Lollypopopolis where he lived with his talking pet duck Frankfurter who loved to talk about cookies, gumdrops, and Conservative American politics.

I could feel them looking at me in the dark, all of those sets of glittering eyes-- or maybe they were glittering swords-- and while I had tried to outrun them, there would be no escaping the horrors that waited for me at the hands of these men-- not men, beasts-- not beasts, demons-- who had plucked me from the fields and who now held me captive-- these demons whose names flickered across my telepathic mind, their thoughts soaked in through my violet-azure-silver with hints of emerald eyes: H'ruck, Cmrrzt, Pobott'a, Shmell, and Gary they were called and I could only hope I knew which was on my side-- my eyes locked with Gary's, and I saw him tremble and melt a bit, and I felt the crush of love for him, and I knew that whatever happened to me then, he would always remember my amethyst eyes, the color of a dewey morning.

Book OneChapter One-Ancient Evil awakes and ridesYou from it can’t hide

“Yes, Wigglewort the Wizard,” grinned Dildo Daggins, “I shall take this ancient amulet-ring-sword and travel with E’lpis the elf prince, Gimlet the Dwarf and Aaargnmphf the mysterious soldier-like-guy to the Darklands to defeat the Evil One and his Evil Plan, for I have a hand-drawn map which marks all the trouble spots of our conveniently square earth.”(F)

I woke up, yawned, brushed my teeth, gargled, and then gazed in the mirror at my cotton candy pink lips and bright red hair and sixteen-year-old hazel eyes that were sad from the recent death of my mother from an unnamed disease and desertion of my dog and best friend, who'd grown breasts over the summer (my best friend, not my dog, though my dog had a dingleberry), and contemplated that I had just moved to a new town and become the enemy of a clique of three rich, beautiful, designer clothes-wearing, popular girls.

Jack and Jill spoke in earnest about going up the hill to fetch a pail of water, but decided at length that the hill was far too high and the old striped sofa in the den far too comfy for such an undertaking, and that they would really prefer to play that new Water Fetch 3000 video game—which they did—the consequence being that a terrible drought descended upon the village, the more terrible in that minimal effort might have prevented it had either Jill or her masculine counterpart possessed the common sense to know that the refreshing blend of hydrogen and oxygen they sought could most easily be accessed at lower elevation.(C)

Frontmatter

Ten things I love: Books, trees, stars, roasted vegetables, "Singin' in the Rain," medium-tip blue rollerball pens, oatmeal, community, Scrabble, and my tall black boots.
All opinions expressed here are solely my own and should not be taken as those of the company for which I work.

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Backmatter

Text and most photos copyright (c) 2003, 2005-2012 by Cheryl B. Klein. All opinions expressed here are solely my own and should not be taken to reflect the opinions or official positions of the company for which I work. Thanks for reading!